


eat your heart out (don't you mind the maggots)

by bam_cassiopeia



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Mythology References, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Road Trips, Storytelling, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 02:42:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18085904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bam_cassiopeia/pseuds/bam_cassiopeia
Summary: For a sideplot filled with physical comedy, it’s got all the building blocks of a tragedy (one immortal being, one murdered woman, blood and guilt and something something unrequited, and smack in the middle of that mess, the McGuffin they both need). Still, Mad Sweeney could just as easily make a joke out of it: an asshole zombie and an angry leprechaun walk into a bar. The leprechaun orders a bloody mary, and the zombie throws it in his face. Then he slips on a banana peel, and falls on a rake.… He never said it would be a funny joke.





	eat your heart out (don't you mind the maggots)

 

**(one)**

For the record, he’s never been great at telling stories in order, no more than he was at prettying them up, and there’s not much that’s palatable in this one to start with. The characters are unlikeable, all the really interesting bits happen elsewhere and to other people, and in fact not much happens at all, but still: it’s a story. And like every story, it has a beginning and an end.

The end, Mad Sweeney doesn’t know how it’ll go, but he expects it’ll be easy to pinpoint, drenched in blood, marked by death, the whole shebang -- that is, if luck comes back to his side. If it doesn’t, the end will be drawn out, painful, and probably deeply humiliating for him but hilarious to everyone else.

It’s the beginning that’s the trickier matter. Maybe it starts when he is still a king, that cursed day he flees the battlefield where he should have died, acquiring the kind of debt that can't be repaid by plucking a few coins out of thin air -- a few, or many, or a whole goddamn hoard. Maybe it starts when Essie MacGowan makes the first of many offerings of milk and bread and sometimes more, or when she crosses the sea with him tucked in her mind like a good-luck charm. (And sure, sure, it’s not only her that brings him here, to the land of opportunity -- it’s poetic licence is what it is. Makes things more palatable.)

Or maybe it starts a few hundred years later, when a con-man of a god tells him _Mad Sweeney, the time to pay up your debt has come, for a war like no other is a-coming_. (Poetic license, again. What he’d really said: _Wake up you drunk idiot, I don’t have all day_ , and then he’d emptied a bottle of water on Mad Sweeney’s head. Grimnir, everyone.)

 

There's a woman named Laura Moon, says Grimnir, a wrench in his plans. _A minor one_ , explains the god with a look of distaste, _but still an inconvenience_. There's her husband, name of Shadow Moon ( _Shadow Moon_ , Sweeney chortles. _What kind of godawful hippy name is that?_ ) -- not a wrench this one, but a pawn. A pawn that needs to be moved, inch by inch, loss by loss, all because the unlucky fuck’s got a part to play in Grimnir’s war. What part that may be, the god doesn’t tell, and Sweeney doesn’t ask. He’s only another pawn in Grimnir’s greedy hands, after all.

That’s where he comes in. Laura Moon must die, the inconvenience removed. It’s not just any old death Grimnir wants, but something sordid, to marr the memory of her.

( _Laura Moon_ _is a selfish bitch,_ says Grimnir, kettle to the woman’s pot, _and she shan’t be mourned long._ )

The other part of the job is to pick up a fight with the husband. That’s Grimnir’s job for Sweeney. Murder the woman, test the man’s mettle, in this order, and better not fuck it up.

And so he does.

(Fuck it up, that is. Kind of -- the fuck up is only tangentially his fault.)

***

When he kills her, the woman named Laura Moon (her, and her lover, who just might be the real casualty in that part of the story. _Sorry Robbie Whatshisname, but that’s just how the dice fell. Nothing personal._ ), he doesn’t know her, not the way he will, and yet -- he does, because there’s nothing special about her and he’s spent days watching her from a distance.

It’s all very boring. Shitty job, shitty house, shitty friends, a probably shitty husband stuck in prison she cuckolds on the regular with a shitty lover, and a shittier attitude to complete the portrait; nothing very original in that story. He’s seen variations on it play out thousands of times.

He finds her depressingly average, Laura Moon. Selfish and petty and bored and maybe a little bit dead inside, barely worth a second look into her dried-up soul; the only thing that makes her stand out is that to Grimnir, she’s an inconvenience.

(That, and Essie MacGowan’s features. The hair color is all wrong, and so’s the smile, but still, it rattles him. Essie was nothing special either, but to him? She was, she was, _she was_.)

***

Scratch that, rewind: he kills her, runs her off the road (her, and Robbie Whatshisname), and it’s sordid like a John Irving book. He knows she’s dead -- he watches as she struggles to take a last breath, as her eyes turn vitreous, as her skin turns livid, and after that everything tastes like ashes, like guilt, like the blood he spilled for a gigantic asshole of a god. It makes him stupid, stupid enough to hand the one thing he can’t do without (his coin, the luck he so badly needs) to her grieving husband, and from there it’s a downward spiral of fuckery, one that continues even after he finds his damn coin, because by then sad-eyed Shadow Moon’s already given it away to his dead wife like it’s some trinket -- you tell a man _this is worthy of a king, no less_ , and what does he do? Gives it a-fucking way like you would a cheap souvenir. Disgusting.

And ironic, in a tragic, fateful kind of way: luck is only a byproduct of what his coin does, so of-fucking-course he doesn’t find it in Laura Moon’s grave, no more than her body -- all he finds there are splinters, and they come from the cheap shovel he brought. What his coin does is sustain life; what the empty casket tells him is it’s doing just that. The fact that it’s doing it for the woman he killed -- the woman he didn’t want to kill, the woman he regrets having killed, is like the cherry on top of a massive joke at his expense.

(It comes down to this: he needs his coin, because he was human too, once, lifetimes ago, and the coin doesn’t need to be in anyone’s chest to sustain life. It worked fine when it was in his pocket, in his hoard, in his ownership.)

***

.

Another beginning: he finds the dead woman walking, and if she’s crawled out of the grave he put her in with inhuman strength and more purpose than she ever had in life, still there’s nothing special about her, nothing but his coin in her chest. She doesn’t deserve a second chance, no more than anyone he’s met in his long life.

(But that’s the thing about second chances: they are rarely, if ever, deserved. That’s the whole fucking point of them. The other thing is: he can relate. A second chance is all he wants for himself, after all, twice over.)

Not that it matters, because he doesn’t have much of a choice anyway. He needs his coin, she has it. He can’t take it by force, not when she can send him flying with a flick of her fingers, and he can’t afford to wait for her to rot either. Pretty simple equation with one solution -- resurrect the fuck out of her.

(That’s a lie; the full version of the equation accounts for Grimnir, and it has no good solution. He does the sensible thing, and doesn’t think about it.)

 

So there it is: the start of the shittiest road trip you could imagine. Step one is to steal a car, ideally a decent one -- and of course it goes badly, a presage of all the things to come. What happens is they get caught by the driver of the taxi they’re trying to steal, a poor fuck searching for the supernatural lover who stood him up. Salim is his name, or maybe it was and isn’t anymore, or maybe it will be again. Who the fuck knows? Sweeney sure doesn’t.

What he knows is that the Jinn Salim hopes to find again is Grimnir’s man, and he doesn’t like that, not one bit. It’s one coincidence too many. He doesn’t like Salim much either; he’s a believer, that one, and a bitter reminder that not every god wastes away.

(He probably deserves better, Salim. Better than being embroiled in a war between gods. Better than a man who works for Grimnir. Or maybe Sweeney’s just projecting. Reverse projecting? Whatever.)

The dead wife does. Like him, that is. And because she does, or because it hits too close to home, the fact that Salim only wants to be with his man, or maybe just because she’s not all thorns, she releases him.

“You’re free,” she tells him, along with where to find him the Jinn, and Salim leaves running, rushing both his goodbye to Laura and his parting shot to Sweeney in his haste.

Sweeney’s pissed to see him go, more for the principle of the thing than anything. It's not like he cares, especially since Salim’s shitty taxi is easily replaced by an even-shittier ice cream truck. What he does care about is their destination, the house of the Goddess of Dawn, Ostara, neatly tucked in a pretty, ever-lush corner of Kentucky.

Ostara’s gift is life, rebirth, power over fucking rabbits and enough sugar to rot your teeth. All in all, she’s not doing too badly these days -- her name mangled, her symbols stripped of meaning, her day denatured, but none forgotten, a benefit of being chummy with all of the Jesuses and the New Gods. For that, and because she owes Sweeney a favor, and because going to her doesn’t mean crossing the whole damned country, Ostara seems like the best option for the dead wife.

***

They reach Ostara’s at the worst possible time. Her annual Easter party is now catering to a very narrow demographic. This year, her mansion is gaudily decked out in pastels and golds and pinks, stuffed with eggs and rabbits and the occasional fish, crowded with Jesuses and Madonnas of all denominations and discreet, somber-looking human caterers.

It’s her day, a good day for resurrections, but it’s not _just_ her day, and that’s not good for Ostara’s mood. (Not that Ostara’s ever been in a good mood, as far as Sweeney’s aware of -- she puts up a great act, and she might just believe it herself, but behind the smiles and the pretty manners, under the sugary sweetness, she’s all bitterness and resentment.)

 

Turns out it’s also a day for bad surprises, and not only for Mad Sweeney. The first one is that Shadow Moon is here, and with him Grimnir -- the very two people he most wants to avoid.

But the biggest one, coming from Ostara herself, is that Laura Moon is the wrong kind of dead, beyond even her gift, and all the owed favors in the world aren’t going to change that.

“You were killed by a god,” simpers the Goddess of Dawn. “I can’t interfere with that.”

That’s only new to the Dead Wife, who loses no time before literally squeezing the truth out of Sweeney as soon as Ostara leaves them, called away by one of her rabbits.

Telling her the truth of her death comes as relief, and not just because it saves his balls from being crushed, but he shoves the feeling away. There are more important things, like convincing Laura to stay onboard his resurrection scheme.

She’ll get a new lease on life, he’ll have his coin back, they’ll both have what they want -- and Grimnir will be free to have her killed a second time, but that’s a problem for future Sweeney.

***

“There’s other options,” he tells Laura. “Other gods to turn to.” Few with power enough to do what Ostara couldn't, and fewer who owe him anything, but just one will be enough, as long as it's the good one. “I know people south that maybe --”

“What about that Wisconsin circlejerk? Where you sent Salim.”

“Where Wednesday will be,” he reminds her. More time in Grimnir’s vicinity is in no fucking way a good idea.

“I don’t want to hang out with him, Ginger Minge, I want to know if any of the bozos at his Gods Anonymous meeting can resurrect me.”

He takes his time to think about it, but lying doesn’t seem like a great idea right now, and he goes with the truth. “Maybe. Mama-ji will be there, if only to spit on Wednesday.”

“Mama,” the dead wife repeats, one eyebrow raised.

“Mama- _ji_. Better known as Kali.”

The eyebrow goes down. “That’s a bit more impressive,” she tells him. “What are we waiting for?”

***

There is more than truth, Grimnir, the Dead Wife’s husband, and a gaggle of Jesuses and their mothers to be found at Ostara's. There are New Gods too: the boy wonder, the cosplay addict, and the snake-voice in charge of them all. It’s a standoff between old and new he watches with the Dead Wife, unnoticed on a balcony. What they see is a chapter of the real story, the one about an epic war, the one Sweeney and Laura only weave in and out of, and as far as chapters go, it’s a game-changing one.

Too bad she doesn’t care for it, is in fact happy to hijack the narrative and ruin Grimnir’s moment of triumph. He’s not complaining; Shadow’s face turns to something not quite like happiness, but Grimnir -- Grimnir looks like looks like his thunder’s been stolen and replaced by a bomb about to go off.

(Less than half an hour ago, Sweeney was telling Ostara it’d be best if Grimnir didn’t know he was here nor that he was with the dead wife, and look at him now, revealing just that to Grimnir, and why? _Because he’s an idiot, that’s why._ )

***

Between the husband and his dead wife there is a conversation, one Sweeney’s not privy to because he does know when to fuck off, thank you very much. Ostara leaves just after the two lovebirds abscond themselves with a comment about guests to herd off. It’s the second time she abandons him to someone who wants his hide today. He needs better frequentations.

The last Sweeney had seen Grimnir, he’d been his man, and there hadn’t been any doubt about it. Now is a different story, even if he’s tried not to think about it.

“Now that we’re alone,” says the god, with the kind of calm that announces a tempest, “I’ve been wondering, what it is exactly you think you’re doing. You and me, I thought we had a deal, and a good one too. I get what I want, you get what you want. What better kind of deal is there?” A slow, disappointed shake of his head, and he continues. “Now, I know you’re an idiot, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but here you are, and here’s Laura Moon, and here I am, thinking you didn’t get me what I want, thinking it doesn’t look like you’re even trying to remedy to that.”

“I met your conditions, Grimnir. Killed the wife, fought the husband, it’s what you wanted, innit?”

“I wanted the spirit, not the letter. For a dead woman who should be rotting in a forgotten grave, Laura Moon goes around quite a bit.”

“I can’t kill her twice.” Truth, if only because she’d gut him first, easy-peasy.

Grimnir cocks an eyebrow, disbelief writ large on his face. “Can’t you? She’s got your precious coin, that should be incentive enough.”

Fuck. Of fucking course Grimnir knows. Sweeney’s jaw itches like crazy, and he’s itching for a smoke. That, and a few hundred miles between him and the God’o’War. Fuck it. “Nah,” he says, shrugging. “It ain’t.”

Grimnir smiles without amusement, a crooked thing that says nothing good. “Is she a good lay at least?”

This, Sweeney knows how to answer. “Hah,” he scoffs. “Too much venom in her.” A lie. If anything, it’s the dead and decaying thing, but he’s pretty fucking sure he doesn’t want the conversation to go anywhere near that, not in a million years. “She’d probably eat me after anyway,” he adds, because the way Grimnir’s smile turns knowing makes him nervous.

The god raises an eyebrow. “The deal is off, then,” he says.

No surprise here, not really, but hearing it still feels like a punch to the gut. Like a weight off his shoulders, too. “Guess it is.”

“Is she worth it?” Grimnir sounds honestly curious.

Sweeney thinks about it. For all of two seconds. “Not at all.”

“You’re really an idiot, then.”

He doesn’t answer that -- what is there to say? But fucked for fucked, might as well get something out of it. “You should know,” he says, “she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants.”

Grimnir snorts. “Cute,” he replies. “And what does she wants?”

“Right now? Same thing you do. To get to the House on the Rock. We need a ride, by the way.” He smiles, wide and mocking -- he’s got the best hand for once, and finds he is eager to hear a _no_ , for the occasion to ask the god if he wants his man Shadow to know who’s behind the death of his wife.

Grimnir answers with a smile of his own. “That’ll be my pleasure. I’m sure Shadow will be glad to have his ex-wife and her… friend join us for a bit.”

Godfuckingdamnit. Even rebelling, even helping the Dead Wife, Sweeney’s useful to the old crook, helping him to drive a deeper wedge between her and Shadow Moon, to tighten his hold on the man.

“Fantastic,” he says. “Shake on mead?”

“Our gracious host does have renowned cellars,” Grimnir acknowledges. “I’m certain she won’t mind.”

(To Sweeney’s surprise, she doesn’t. Unsurprisingly, the mead tastes like it came out of someone, but Grimnir seems satisfied by the ritual, and then it’s just him and Ostara and expensive wine. For once, she’s in a good mood.)

 

**(two)**

The drive to the House on the Rock takes something between forever and the better part of a day. It’s tense and all kinds of awkward, the four of them crammed in Grimnir’s car, the air thick with things unsaid and the smell of rot mixed with cigarette smoke. Ostara’s mansion can still be seen in the rearview window and Sweeney’s already missing the ice cream truck. It’d been slow, too fucking cold, and the company sure had left something to be desired, but at least it hadn’t felt like waiting for a bomb to go off.

Silence reigns over the car -- whatever went on between Shadow and his dead wife, it can’t have been all roses and violets. They’re not talking. Neither’s Sweeney, although in his case that’s because he’d rather not be liting fuses. That’d be his luck. Grimnir mostly sleeps -- or fake-sleeps, no way to know -- for hours on end, but once in a while he breaks the silence, throwing a comment like so much oil on the fire.

“You know what I value,” he asks Shadow, shaking his head like he’s about to deliver some profound wisdom. “Loyalty.”

Like he’s one to talk.

“Sure,” Shadow replies, glancing at the Dead Wife through the rearview mirror.

Not long enough after that and the god takes a sniff of the air, another, a third. “I’ll never get the stench out of Betty,” he grumbles.

Behind the wheel, Shadow winces. Dead Wife replies with a smile that means fuck you and deliberately snubs her cigarette on the car seat between them. Grimnir keeps silent, but he radiates enough anger that the atmosphere in the car feels electric, and the look he gives Laura is one of cold hate, at odds with his usual, genial mask. He’s rarely the one getting his chain yanked, Grimnir, even less so by a human.

(If he hadn’t been smack in the middle of the inevitable blast radius, Sweeney would have found the whole thing deeply satisfying -- for years it’s been Grimnir yanking _his_ chain, and it’s fucking sweet to see the tables turn.)

 

For hours, the road takes them through the parched landscape Ostara created; they drive past dried-up fields and dead trees and the occasional empty riverbed. Nothing green has survived, and the heat feels oppressive. His mouth, his nose, his eyes are dry, and the longer it goes on, the more he regrets leaving the ice cream truck and its coldness behind. Cosmic irony with him as the butt of the joke, again.

There’s something terrifying in the extent of the desolation, a display of power the likes of which he hasn’t seen in a long time. Part of him wants to relish in it, as a sign of the war he’s long waited for, of his coming death, but it’s not as nice a thought as it used to be, and the view leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He’s seen landscapes like this before, and he can’t shake the feeling that this bleak, desolate view is more a disaster than a victory.

It doesn’t last forever. Patches of green start appearing in surviving trees, then grasses and crops, and slowly they leave all traces of Ostara’s work behind. It’s a fucking relief, if only because it makes breathing easier. Another gradual change: signs pointing in the direction of the House multiply, to the point it seems like there’s one at every crossroad. Some are old and some are new, some are big and some small, most of them garishly colored. There are more and more of them as the years pass, sprouts from an ancient tree reaching further and further.

 

And then there’s the House’s parking, an immense stretch of dark asphalt criss-crossed by white lines like the floor plan of an ancient temple, and he gets to think of nothing but the ache in his legs for one blessed minute. It’d have been longer, but there’s Laura.

“C’mon Ginger Minge,” she says as soon as they’re out of the car, stretching her arms -- out of habit probably. Dead people don’t need to stretch. “Let’s find your Mama.”

He sighs, wishes she could in fact appreciate fucking stretching and give him more than a minute. “That’s Mama-ji, and she’s not my --”

“Don’t care. Chop chop, _now_.”

She fishes the oversized sunglasses she uses to hide her milky dead eyes out of a pocket, grabs his sleeve and pulls. _Stomp stomp_ she goes, leaving him little choice but to follow after a quick wave in the direction of Shadow and Grimnir, who both look equally relieved and annoyed. It’s not a good look for either of them.

“That’s my arm,” he tells the dead wife, tugging back, but not too hard, because he knows who’ll win that contest. “I’m using it. And,” he adds, since he is a fucking idiot, “I know you’re a big girl who doesn’t need any advice, but maybe don’t do that in front of your husband.”

“‘Til death do us part, isn’t that what you said?” The tone is airy, unbothered, and yet bitter enough to curd milk. There are landmines here, and he doesn’t know what to do with them.

“What, you’re listening to me now?”

“Shut up,” she says, but she lets him go and shoves her hands in her jacket’s oversized pockets.

(Immediately, he wishes she hadn’t, and it’s fucking mortifying.)

***

One overdrawn argument about whether they ought to go with the Ultimate Experience or Highlight Experience tickets later and he feels more inclined to deck her than anything else, and if the fact that it feels like normalcy isn’t all kinds of fucked up he doesn’t know what it is.

(He loses, to the obvious amusement of the young woman in the ticket booth. _Have fun_ , she says, winking exaggeratedly, before sending them on their way with a warning about low ceilings.)

There are gods in the House, and even if all of them are diminished to a degree, the air still surges with their combined power. It’s like a sound just beyond audible range, a shrill buzzing his brain hears without help from his ears that sets his teeth on edge.

Besides him, the dead wife watches people, frowning. “Is this like Easter’s? Like, everyone here’s a god?”

“Nah, there’s probably more humans around than there are gods.”

“How do you tell who’s what?”

“By the pricking of my thumbs,” he tells her. He just knows, the way he knows bitter from sweet. The woman in pink that walks past them is human, and the smiling old man in his wheelchair, and the sullen teenager looking down into her phone. All humans. The man with grey hairs, though, that one’s not. “Anyone feels like danger? Even if they don’t look like it. Don’t _think_ about it. Just say it.”

“O-kay,” she mutters. “That one.” It’s Grey Hairs she’s pointing to.

“There you go.”

“Wait, he really is a god? Which one?”

“How the fuck would I know? I’m not psychic. Nevermind him anyway, it’s a woman we’re looking for. Scary lady, black hair, probably wearing a sari.”

Besides him, the dead wife bites her lip, which is always fascinating to watch -- a bit too much strength and she’s likely to bit off a chunk of flesh. “Red? The sari.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a scary lady with black hair and a red sari waving at us,” Laura explains, pointing to their left. And indeed there is. He waves back to Kali, only a little bit dumbfounded that the universe seems to be giving him his first break in days.

***

Mama-ji, to his surprise, likes the dead wife -- likes her enough that she does help, though that might just be because Sweeney tells her Grimnir won’t appreciate it. The old lady lives off pissing people off, Sweeney’s pretty sure of that.

“I like bad apples,” she says, like it’s a secret, white teeth glistening in her gaunt face. He laughs.

“Yeah,” he tells Kali, “she’s a real asshole, that one.” Dead wife elbows him, hard enough he coughs up his guts for a full minute.

“I can’t bring you back,” Mama-ji also says, “but I can give you something else. I can give you time.”

“Time is good,” replies the dead wife, but her face says otherwise. It says: not enough, not enough, _not enough_.

“So ungrateful.” Mama-ji sounds delighted, and Sweeney laughs again. Laura looks almost offended.

 

What Mama-ji does: in the women’s bathroom, with Sweeney standing against the door, keeping it closed, she has Laura sit in one of the cubicles, and rips open the scar on her chest. _Hmmph_ , she goes, shaking her head, bejeweled fingers poking at exposed bones and tissues. Sweeney thinks of turning away for all of two seconds, but he’s already seen Laura’s tits and what’s under them (the tits are nice enough, the rest isn’t) so he doesn’t, instead watches Mama-ji sewing the scar closed again with hairs plucked from her own scalp. It’s quick and not very impressive as far as magic goes. When she’s done, she kisses Laura’s forehead, tucks her hair back, looking for all the world like a grandmother with a favoured granddaughter.

“You’re mine now, child,” she says, stepping back. She licks her lips, like the mouse who got the cat. “Don’t you forget it.”

“As long as you don’t forget me,” replies Laura, not the thankful kind.

He does it for her: “Thanks, Mama-ji. I owe you one.”

The old lady chortles, waves his thanks away. “You don’t, but if you ever find a nice bottle of soma it’d be nice if you could think of your old friend Mama-Ji, hmm?”

“Sure,” he says. It’s a lot to ask for, and nothing, because it’s unlikely he’ll find himself in the possession of a bottle of soma anytime soon.

“Good boy,” says the old lady. He winces as Laura makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like muffled laughter. “Now run along, and be bad.”

 _Swish-swish_ , goes her sari as she leaves the room, humming a satisfied-sounding tune that could be a lullaby or a war-chant.

The door barely has time to close behind her before Laura repeats “Good boy!,” laughing like the asshole she is.

***

Laura decides she wants to find Salim, so that’s what they do. It takes some searching, going from musty room to dusty room, all badly lit and filled with weird, nightmarish shit, but Salim’s easy to find, sitting in a food court out of the fifties, very much not alone: besides him is a bearded man wearing sunglasses, and if Sweeney’s not mistaken, they’re holding hands under the table. They’re too wrapped up in each other to notice Laura approaching, until she sits in front of them and goes: “You found the Jinn!”

“Laura!”, says Salim, who seems far too wrapped up in his own little world to be surprised. “I did.” He smiles like an idiot in love. The Jinn smiles too. Sweeney rolls his eyes.

“He found me,” says the Djinn, so much wonder in his voice that Sweeney doesn’t even have the heart to mock him.

“She helped,” Salim tells him. He points to Sweeney. “So did that one, although he is very unpleasant. He says he is a leprechaun. Laura is dead, not a leprechaun.”

“Thank you,” says the beaming Jinn.

“You can help us too,” Laura says. “If you want.”

She spreads a map on the table, one she bought at the souvenir shop with his money. “Do you know where I can find gods?”

It’s up to Sweeney to explain, as Laura lits up a cigarette in spite of the _no smoking_ sign in front of her, just above Salim’s head. “Not just anyone -- we’re searching for someone who could help with her little death problem. Definitely. Or at least help with the smell.”

“Asshole,” Laura mutters around her cigarette. They all ignore her.

The Jinn does know people, though most of them Sweeney already knows. Still, between the two of them they come up with a list -- gods of rebirth and gods of death and gods of healing. There aren’t many names, and “Bacchus can be found in Las Vegas more often than not” isn’t that helpful (Vegas isn’t _small_ ), but it’s better than nothing.

They also all get booted out for smoking inside the cafeteria, which surprises no one.

 

He’s not sure the dead can pass through the carousel, even less that they can come back, and it’s not like Laura Moon cares for the God’o’War sales’ pitch, or like he hasn’t already heard it, and so they leave right after she makes Salim promise to be here next year on the same day. She first proposes to exchange phone numbers, but Salim doesn’t have one of those, and neither do dead people. Discrimination, she jokes.

(Sweeney asks if she doesn’t want to say goodbye to Shadow at least. She doesn’t -- _It’s not goodbye_ , she says, jaw clenched, and that’s that.)

***

“We’re taking Betty,” she declares as they find their way back to the parking lot, smile knife-sharp like she’s already savouring her petty vengeance. It’s a shit idea, taking Grimnir’s car, the kind of batshit crazy dumb decision you could write an epic about, really, even if it’s tempting, the way only things that are bad for you can be.

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a fuckload of ideas.” Still, he can almost see Grimnir’s face, the satisfying but probably not worth it mix of disbelief and rage.

“Liar.”

“It’s either the best or the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” he amends, and so they steal themselves a car from the god of war.

(The thing is, he doesn’t have much in terms of impulse control; with luck on his side, it’s not something he’s needed to cultivate. And Betty does have the kind of alarm that’s easy to circumvent. It’s not like he’s likely to ever make up with Grimnir either, anyway. Fucked for fucked, might as well go all the way.)

***

They can still see the House in the rearview mirror when she asks: “How do you kill a god?”

“Grimnir?”

“Obviously, shit for brains.”

Sweeney shrugs. “Kick him hard enough. In the nuts,” he adds, because that just makes the mental image better.

“I'm being serious here.”

“So am I. You kill a god just like you'd kill a human. Destroy the body so it sticks, and that's it.” It’s a bit more complex than that, in truth -- you can’t kill _belief_ after all. Enough of it and just like the proverbial cat, gods come back, again and again and again.

“So... I could have done the fucker in.”

“Sure,” Sweeney laughs. “When? Ostara would have fried you, the House was full of his allies, and I’m sure your man Shadow would have loved to see his undead wife beat up his divine boss. Smart plan.”

“Hmm,” she mumbles, and he takes it to mean she knows he’s right. “Well,” she adds with fake cheeriness, “there’s always next time.”

 

**(three)**

She drives all the way South. Insists on it. He’s pretty sure it’s because it gives her something to focus on that’s not her slowly decaying flesh or when she’ll next see Shadow or whatever else it is she worries about. She says it’s _logical_.

“I don’t need sleep,” she argues. “I don’t need to eat, I don’t need to drink --”

“Or to piss,” he adds helpfully. She rolls her eyes.

“How old are you again? No, I don’t need to piss either, or to shit, or to stretch my legs, whatever. Which means I should be driving.”

He squashes the urge to remind her that she spectacularly crashed an ice cream truck only days ago; he’s got things he doesn’t really want to think about too, and that accident is near the top of the list. Instead he tells her he needs to do all the things she doesn’t, because it’s true and kind of a sticking point.

“Your logic is bullshit, Dead Wife.”

She shrugs. “And yet I’m still driving. You get the map or you get to shut up, your choice.”

He doesn’t, in fact, want the fucking map, and there’s probably a shitty metaphor in that, but it ends up being his responsibility nonetheless. He tells himself he’s just picking his battles for all of two days, which is the time it takes him to realize being tasked with the cursed map means more battles, most of them circling around the subject of his ability to read -- which he can do just fine, thank you kindly.

(He does try to drive, once. It does not go well. They’re in the middle of nowhere, barely ten miles after getting his ass behind the wheel, and the car fills up with thick, dark smoke, and a smell worse than the dead wife’s. They barely have time to exit it that the damn thing catches on fucking fire. He watches it burn down, fists clenched, while Laura laughs long and loud like the asshole she is.)

 

Two stolen cars later, and they have a routine. She drives, of course. They avoid highways and cities, partly because even though they’ve shown no interest, he’d rather stay out of the New Gods’ radar as much as possible -- nothing wrong with some healthy paranoia when you’re the butt of a long-running cosmic joke. Partly because one of them is a corpse, and for all that humans can fail to see what’s right under their nose… well. That’s a generalization he doesn’t care to test. At best the dead wife causes a panic, at worst she gets carted off to some government facility and then he’s never seeing his fucking coin again. Healthy paranoia, the point still stands.

She doesn’t fight him on that, even if she does call him an overly paranoid little bitch before saying he’s had worst ideas. Coming from her that’s a goddamn glowing endorsement. She still insists on going around like she’s not fucking dead whenever they stop for a bit, but there’s nothing he can do about that beyond looking menacing to chase people off.

Not that they stop often or for long. She’s on a deadline, and the sooner he gets his coin back, the better. Sightseeing is not on the menu. If it means sleeping in the back of the car when he needs to, which is hell on his back, worse on his knees, and comes with the worst fucking crick in his neck -- well, so be it. Par for the course, he figures, that most of the time he’d tag along with her would be painful in every fucking way.

***

Grimnir’s ravens show up once in a while, black shapes stark against clear skies or hidden in foliage, a reminder that the old man hasn’t forgotten them, and neither has the world at large. Most of the time, they keep their distance, and when they don’t it’s to be the kind of assholes their master would be proud of.

...They always, _always_ find him when he tries to have a piss in peace and quiet, another shitty joke with him as the punchline.

 _Caw, caw_ , they go, preening like little shits. _We’re watching, watching you, and we know, we know_.

“Lemme guess, gonna run to Daddy to tell on me? Again?”

 _Caw, caw_ , answer the ravens. _We will, oathbreaker, we will_.

(He tries batting one away, only manages to get piss on his shoes. He doesn’t try again.)

Even the dead wife notices, and she doesn’t notice shit if it’s not about her. “What,” she asks with a frown presaging violence, “the fuck is up with those crows?”

“Ravens,” he corrects, and she rolls her eyes.

 _Caw_ , goes the nearest bird, perched on a solitary tree. _Caw_!

“Excuse me, _ravens_.”

“They’re Grimnir’s.”

“Oh,” she says, and then, grinning like she’s just had a great idea: “See any stone around? I’m pretty sure I can hit at least one.”

It takes a bit of searching, but they do find a few nicely sized stones. The ravens watch them curiously. Dumb things. It takes some bickering -- it’s him the ravens keep bothering, it was her idea, and some laying down of rules (kill is ten points, maiming five, one throw per turn, one turn per person, no exceptions), but in the end she throws, and the raven falls from its tree.

“Nice,” Sweeney admits.

“I know,” she crows, hands on her hips. “I’m going to _kick your ass_ at this.”

***

They stop for oil somewhere south of Memphis, a small shitty place next door to a smaller church with a huge billboard advertising salvation in this life and the next. She goes inside to pay -- it’s the kind of shit she insists on doing, even though the smell of death trails behind her. _It’s disaster you’re courting_ , he tells her. _The dead don’t go unnoticed forever_. She gives him the finger and goes wherever she wants to go. If anyone does notice her, the dead woman walking, they say nothing.

She goes in and comes back, walks up to him with a vicious smile, and fucking throws something in his face. A keyring, cheap, bright plastic: a small man sporting green clothes and green hat, buckled shoes and bright orange hair, holding a four-leafed clover. _Har-fucking-har._

“Fuck you,” he tells her, and she laughs, a real hearty laugh, and fuck him sideways but it's a nice sound and he could do with hearing it more often.

(He throws the keyring right back in her face. She calls him a little bitch.)

***

She grows on him, like some kind of persistent fungus.

She’s comfortable enough around him to be her worst self -- self-centered, aggressive, crass, just plain mean and awfully bossy, and although he exercises his God-given right to complain, often and loudly, he does pretty much whatever the fuck she wants. He lets her stash the cheap sunglasses she doesn't need in his pockets and doesn’t protest when she steals his wallet to buy packs of cigs or drinks she can’t taste.

(Whatever the fuck she wants includes buying magazines printed on glossy paper just so she can read her horoscope. The glossy pages offer a future filled with exotic encounters and vague opportunities to be on the lookout for. _I used to make fun of them with a friend_ , she says before deciding he’s a Taurus. _Bull in a china shop_ , she snickers.

He mocks the whole process relentlessly, but he still buys the fucking magazines.)

It’s easier to let her have her way, is what he tells himself. Nothing to do with the way she smiles, or the fact that she was pretty once, beautiful even, and when the light hits just right, she still is. But even when the light wakes the rich shades of her hair and hides those of her dead flesh, even when her scars can’t be seen, nor the milkiness of her eyes, even then, the stench of decomposition remains, and with it a feeling of just plain _wrong_. It’s subtle, but the very way she moves betrays her -- it’s will that moves her body, that and more luck than any human should ever own, not the subtle dance of muscles and tendons and bones.

***

“Santa Claus?”

“No idea. Might be.”

“The tooth fairy?”

“Sure. Handed over your own teeth?”

“Some.”

“Not someone you’d like to meet, then.”

“Ri-ight. Hmm, thunderbirds?”

“Extinct.”

“That’s sad.”

“That’s life.”

***

The day before they enter Louisiana, he finds her a cowboy hat in a tiny giftshop with a facade painted red and blue and white; there’s a full row of them in a badly lit corner, surrounded by cringy memorabilia. They’re dusty, a bit musty, not that misshapen, and more importantly: cheap. The one he takes is a bit too big for her, but that’s just as well; hides more of her face. It’s slow, the decaying of her, but it hasn’t stopped. She tells him the hat smells worse than she does, and he almost forgets she can’t smell for shit.

(That’s a lie. He doesn’t almost forget, because it’s always there, the knowledge that he killed her, that she knows, and they’re just playing an elaborate game of pretend because it’s easier than honesty, and they don’t even like each other.)

 

She wears the hat when they reach their destination. The cemetery is hard to find for those who don’t know it exists, hidden in a forgotten fold of land where few venture. No roads lead to the small enclosure nestled between ancient elms and weeping willows, with its one overgrown path and the dozen gravestones on each side. It has the stillness of a place long left undisturbed, but behind the curtain of trees is a house, old and patched up but sturdy-looking, with a wooden porch that seems as big as the house itself.

“This here is private property, fuckers, and if I’m not mistaken, I know who this piss-poor excuse of a haircut belongs to,” says the Baron from behind them, nasal voice unmistakable. “You have two minutes to fuck off, and then I shoot.”

“Hello to you too,” replies Sweeney, turning slowly towards the loa. The antique gun in Baron Samedi remains pointed at him, but it’s covered in enough rust that it’s not quite as menacing as it could have been.

“Tell me,” asks the Baron, “what is it with _no_ your master finds so fucking hard to understand?”

“Everything,” Sweeney snorts. “But I’m not here for Grimnir this time.”

There’s a short, surprised silence, but the Baron only shrugs, and the gun doesn’t move. “You grow a pair or you grow tired of doing his dirty work?”

Thousand dollar question, that. “I’m here for her,” Sweeney says, pointing to the dead wife.

She waves her hand and smiles, a ridiculously fake thing. “Hi. I’m Laura, and I’m not done with the leprechaun, so I’d rather you don’t shoot him. Yet.”

The Baron looks at her, the mottled shades of her skin and the scars she hasn’t bothered hiding.

“Well,” he says, and whistles as he finally lowers his weapon. “That’s kinky.”

 

On the huge porch there’s a swing chair sitting two, and on it Maman Brigitte and her husband, looking for all the world like a boring old couple and not at all like the thriving divinities they once were. Maman Brigitte’s eyes are as piercing as always, but she moves more slowly than ever, and there are new lines in her face. She’s dying, Sweeney knows, the same slow process of wasting away that comes for every divinity sooner or later as belief starts to wane, just… more advanced.

He doesn’t like being here, seeing it, knowing it’s what’s in store for him. He didn’t like it when he came as Grimnir’s emissary, trying to no avail to convince the Baron that his wife’s salvation could be in war, and he likes it even less now.

( _No_ , the Baron had said, and _Your master, he lies like he breathes. What, one big fight and suddenly everyone has worshippers aplenty? Don’t make me laugh,_ and _I will not leave her, not now, not when we have so little time left_.)

There is awkward small talk, an assortment of biscuits in a tin box, and tea that tastes like dirt even with a generous helping of rum, served in delicate-looking bone china cups with too-small handles. Maman Brigitte’s is chipped, and the Baron’s sports traces of having been broken and glued back together.

“It’s been decades since we’ve had your kind of visitors,” Maman Brigitte says once the subject of Kentucky’s freak weather is exhausted. “Although it’s humans that used to bring dead bodies here, and fully dead ones at that. Not that it happened often, mind you, you’d have to be desperate, but it did… And I imagine it’s the same thing they did you want.”

“Resurrection,” says the dead wife, something like hope in her voice.

“Fucking no,” says the Baron, turning to Sweeney. “You bring your floozy here, thinking what? That I’ll do some damn voodoo, kill a chicken or two, magic her alive because you asked? I owe you shit, and --”

“Papi,” his wife interrupts. “Just tell them.”

The Baron deflates, anger leaving as fast as it came. “I can’t,” he says. “They know my name still, I’m in their movies and their games and their books, they wear my veve as jewelry or on their tee-shirts and they even dress up like me, but they don’t believe, forget _worship_. I can’t resurrect anyone. I can do nothing for you,” he finishes, turning to Laura. “Nothing.”

“Oh,” Laura says. “That’s good to know,” She takes a sip from the cup of tea she’d not touched, frowns at it before carefully putting it down on the table. “I think I’m going to take a walk, now.”

She stands up abruptly and walks away, back ramrod straight, striding machine-like.

“Fuck,” Sweeney tells the universe. What else is there to say?

“Have a drink,” Maman Brigitte offers. The Baron hands Sweeney the bottle of rum with a crooked half-smile.

It’s tempting. Have several drinks. Deal with shit later. “I’m good,” he says, painfully aware of how unconvinced he sounds. “Thanks. I’ll just go and… talk to her.”

...Maybe one drink.

***

He finds Laura sitting motionless against the low wall of the cemetery, staring at the graves. He joins her, rolls himself a cig, slowly, both to avoid staring at her too long and to find something to say. It’s late, and the dying light is gentle to her, though it does nothing for the stench of decay. It’s going to be a problem soon. They can paint her over -- a few cans of spray tans and she’ll be orange rather than grey; but even dunking her in perfume wouldn’t help when it comes to smell.

Definitely not what he should say, that.

He turns to the graves, lights his cigarette, still searching for the right words, but she saves him from further introspection by talking first. “There’s no point to this, is there? I’m going to die.”

There’s something he’s not heard a lot of in her voice. Resignation. It makes him feel anxious. “You’re already dead. Dead Wife.”

She grunts. “You should know,” she says.

He forces himself to shrug. “If it hadn’t been me, Grimnir still would’ve sent _someone_.” She’d never have left her grave. He’d never have lost his coin. He’d still be working for Wednesday probably.

“Forget it.” She sighs -- fake sighs. “I meant…I can’t have that much time left. And I know what’s waiting for me, once I’m done.”

“The eternal flames of damnation?”

“Worse.”

“There’s a point you’re getting at with this pity party?”

“If you knew you were going to die, what would you do?”

Flee. Not that it turned out so well, and it’s not exactly an option for her anyway. “No idea,” he tells her. “I’d start with a drink or two I imagine. Or three.”

That gets a chopped laugh out of her. “Yeah, I was thinking more like important, unfinished business. A vacation in Hawaii. Not --”

“Fuck up my liver since there’s no point to keeping my body a temple?”

“Right, that.”

He could tell her -- tell her he _is_ going to fucking die without his coin, that he could have already walked away with it, that whatever time he has left, he’s spending it helping her. She might even believe him. Somewhere to his left an owl hoots, jerking him back to reality. “I stand by it,” he says. “But I’m not the dead bitch walking, so spill. What stupid shit is it you want to do? Another little visit to your family maybe?”

For a second, he thinks she’s going to punch him. “No,” she replies. “I’m going to fuck up Wednesday’s plans.” She doesn’t say: _for Shadow_ , but she doesn’t need to.

Sweeney’s not surprised, to tell the truth. He should be frustrated; going after Grimnir isn’t going to help him get his coin back -- it’s not at all going to be good for his life expectancy, in fact. He isn’t -- much. “Going to war, huh.”

“I wasn’t going to be this dramatic but why the fuck not,” she replies, though he wasn’t really talking to her. “Going to war it is.”

A war against gods old and new, waged for the sake of a dead woman’s husband. A war against the whole fucking world, and one he probably won’t come back from.

It’s a better offer than Grimnir’s was, and he didn’t hesitate to take that one.

“Count me in,” he tells Laura Moon, and that’s the story of how Mad Sweeney learned to find war in unexpected places.

***

(They leave early in the morning. He turns back in the middle of the cemetery, to look at the house one last time, but all he sees are trees. No ravens anywhere, which might count as a good sign. He wonders if Grimnir will find it as funny as he does, the fact that Laura Moon might just be a bigger problem dead than alive in the end. That’s the kind of dramatic irony Sweeney can appreciate.

“I’m not waiting for you,” she calls, already ahead. An empty threat. “So you best get a fucking move on.”

He flips her the bird, and waves goodbye to the house he can’t see. He won’t be coming back.)

 

( _Rideau_ )

 

**Author's Note:**

> my forever thanks to [ashesforfoxes](https://twitter.com/ashesforfoxes), lovely person, excellent shipmate, amazing beta. ily.  
> special thanks to Myrrha and Sean for supporting and enabling my nonsense.  
> \--  
> Five facts:  
> 1) My love for Laura Moon is bottomless.  
> 2) This is my “screw writing rules” fic and boy am I happy I managed to finish it. It took some drastic cutting and remodeling and a lot of pain and swearing, this time from me, but there it is, the monster to my Frankenstein. *sheds a tear*  
> 3) First draft goes back to the teaser for S2. NOLA ending up an actual destination in the series was completely unexpected. Chalk that one up to serendipity I guess.  
> 4) I almost included 69 "fuck(ing/ed)" but then I remembered I'm not twelve.  
> 5) The _sordid like a John Irving book_ reference is specifically to _The World According to Garp_ , in honor of its own unforgettable bitten-off dick/car accident/adultery sequence. jsyk.


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